Hello- I have lurked for a while trying to find someone with the same problem that I have, and haven't found it; apologies in advance if this has already been covered.

I have an E-510- bought in March 2008. Initially, it vibrated (to remove dust from the internal mirror) when I turned it on and when I turned it off. After about 6 months, it only vibrated when I turned it off- not a big issue for me.

Recently, it has started vibrating indiscriminately- turning it on, off, when I'm getting ready to take a pic, in the middle of taking pics, etc. It sometimes even continually vibrates, and does not allow me to take pics. At other times, the power does not come on at all when I turn it on.

Another problem- and I don't know that this is not related- I shoot most of my pictures in the "P" mode. But the setting changes, at random, to the "Portrait" mode; in other words, the mode dial remains on "P" but the LCD screen shows the symbol for portrait. Usually, the only way to get it back to "P" is to rotate the dial to the end of its cycle and then all the way back to "P".

Finally, if the camera is on and I am taking pictures, and want to change the mode (eg to "A" or "S", it also starts vibrating immediately when I touch the mode select button.

I'm at my wits' end trying to figure what might the problem be, whether all these symptoms are inter-related, and how can it be resolved?

Sounds like a trip to Olympus is in order if you want to keep that one, specific body. The image stabilization is only supposed to vibrate the camera one time, and that's when you turn the camera off. Turning it on should not cause it to vibrate, nor at any other time except when turning the camera off.

I agree with Greg that a trip, or at least a call to the Olympus service center to discuss the problems is in order because it sounds like you've got a couple of different issues going on. The image stabilization issue as well as the mode dial malfunctioning.

Have you tried using the camera with the IS off and see how it responds?
Have you used a different -fully charged battery?

A firmware upgrade might be in order, but I would talk with Olympus prior to that.

Just in case there was some way to set the camera to do what its doing, I'd do a reset first. It puts the settings the way they were when the camera was new. If that does not do the trick, the news likely is not good.

The rattle is caused by the stabilization feature, I'd guess, not the dust buster. If the noise goes away if you turn that off, I'd just shoot that way, as repair would likely cost more than the value of the camera. Of my shooting, I'd say at least 85% is done with the stabilization off.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. The problem is definitely in the power button/mode select button area. I reset the camera to factory settings, turned IS off, and now the vibration is not evident, but each time I touch the power button or the mode select knob, the LCD screen goes blank, and both the blue SSWF light in the front as well as the red indicator light in the back start flashing. This goes on for several seconds, and then I am able to use the camera.

It's an annoyance at this point- I can probably learn to live with it as long as it doesn't get any worse.